Jane Austen

by Claire Tomalin

  One possibility is that she suffered from a lymphoma such as Hodgkin’s disease—a form of cancer—which would produce recurrent fevers and progressive weakening, leading to death.

  This could have originated as early as 1813, remaining latent until the winter of 1815–16. In 1813 she suffered from pain in her face for seven weeks between the end of July and the end of September, severe enough to be noted by her niece Fanny in her diary, and referred to by Jane herself in a letter. At Chawton, Fanny wrote of her having a “cold in her face,” “a very stiff face,” and “suffering sadly with her face”; and of her preferring to sleep at the Great House rather than expose her face to the night air by walking back to the cottage, on six different evenings in August and September. Jane then wrote from Godmersham of “severe pain” in her face for several days after catching cold on the journey; given her stoicism, severe pain must have been severe indeed.

  Anyone suffering from trigeminal neuralgia, or tic douloureux , will avoid exposure to cold air for fear of the severe pain in the face it produces. And tic douloureux may follow shingles at a time of immunosuppression such as the beginning of lymphoma. If she had a latent lymphoma in 1813, it could very well have remained without symptoms for another two years or more. The obvious drawback to this hypothesis is that there is no evidence of her having shingles, and it seems unlikely that such a painful affliction would go unmentioned, even by someone as stoical as Jane Austen, or unnoticed by those around her. It is still, however, perfectly possible that her final illness was caused by a lymphoma.

  This note was written after consultation with Dr. Eric Beck.

  Appendix ii

  “AN AFRICAN STORY” FROM FANNY AUSTEN’S POCKET-BOOK, 1809, WITH A NOTE ON ATTITUDES TO SLAVERY

  The Revd. George Austen became in 1760 a trustee of a plantation in Antigua belonging to an Oxford contemporary, James Nibbs; Nibbs became James Austen’s godfather, and sent his own son George to school at Steventon. The Austens thus had a link with slavery, even if a remote one; and indeed few English families of any means in the eighteenth century did not have connections of some kind with slavery.

  Jane Austen’s reference to the slave trade in Emma shows where she stood. When Jane Fairfax speaks of agencies for governesses as akin to the sale of “human flesh,” Mrs. Elton answers, “If you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to abolition.” Jane Fairfax goes on to say that the two activities may be “widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.” Austen’s point here is to do with governessing, not slavery; but there is no doubt that she takes for granted her readers’ agreement that the slave trade is a guilty one.

  Battleridge, the novel by Mrs. Austen’s cousin, Mrs. Samuel Cooke, and published in 1799, also suggests disapproval of slavery. The story is set in the seventeenth century, when abolitionism would be anachronistic; but when a young man is given a position working for a Barbados planter and sends money home, his small brother lays stress on the fact that “he did not beat the poor blackamoors to get it.” It is a small point; what matters is that it is made at all.

  It is worth remembering too that Cowper, a poet favoured by both Mr. Austen and his younger daughter, and read aloud en famille, was a fervent abolitionist.

  Finally, the following “African Story,” from the printed matter in Fanny Austen’s diary for 1809, shows that concern for slaves, and horror at the trade in them, was by then so general that the publishers of ladies’ diaries could confidently assume that such a story, wholly sympathetic if also thoroughly naïve, would be entirely welcome.

  Owhyhee loved the girl who lived in the next cottage to that in which he resided. She was considered by the young men who inhabited the village, the most beautiful girl round the spot, and she loved, most affectionately loved Owhyhee. They did not know what it was to run counter to the dictates of nature at the instigation of interest, and the day was fixed, on which, according to the rites of the tribe to which they belonged, the marriage was to be celebrated.

  “My Ora,” said Owhyhee to her, as they walked together beneath the shade of some spreading palm-trees, “we will bind together the leaves of the beautiful shade which now keeps the sun from our heads, to make our cot, and you shall fetch water from beneath the mountain, to refresh the fading leaves, and they will look doubly sweet, as though in gratitude at deriving their nourishment from a hand so lovely.”

  “And then,” replied the maid, “thy Ora will smile at thy return, and the dewy heads of the palm tree will let fall a glistening drop, as though in tears to greet thee.”

  “And then I shall return so joyful from the chace,” returned Owhyhee, “and lay the spoils at the feet of my Ora. And when I urge my canoe over the wave, all the fish I collect will be for Ora; the thought of thee will add to my diligence; and whether I hurl the spear at the tiger, or at the monster of the deep, my arm will still be nerved by Ora.”

  At length the day arrived which had been fixed as the one on which the union should take place. The elders of the tribe were assembled beneath the protecting shade of a sort of rural tent, which was only inhabited on these occasions, and the marriage ceremony was performed. As was usual, the villagers who were assembled celebrated the union of the young couple with the most lively demonstrations of joy. In the midst of their innocent revelry, an unusual noise was heard, and the innocent villagers rose from their seats. Soon the origin of all this alarm was disclosed. An European vessel had anchored off the coast, which was not far distant, and part of the crew had landed, for the purpose of tearing the unoffending people from their native plains, and all their bosoms held most dear. On their approach, however, finding the whole of the inhabitants of the village together, and not thinking themselves equal to an attack on them, collected as they were, they fired a musquet, in the hope that the alarm would disperse them; finding they had in some measure succeeded, they now fired from three or four different places, and the consternation of the poor victims encreased. The assailants, seizing this opportunity, rushed into the middle of the circle, and the affrighted Africans fled. Owhyhee attempted to take Ora, who had fallen, from the field, but in vain; he was pursued, and together with others, made prisoners by the invaders. He was torn from the arms of his Ora, who, though almost dead with terror, would still have detained him, and with his fellow victims, was conveyed to the ship from which the white men had landed. Soon Owhyhee and his countrymen left the shore which had given them birth, and which now contained all they held dear.

  “Oh, my Ora!” exclaimed Owhyhee, as he franticly beat the deck with his chains, “who will now water the palm leaves by which we were to have been shaded?—Thou wilt, my Ora, but it will be with thy tears.”

  His complaints, however, were winds to the rugged hearts which heard them. The ship, after an expeditious passage, arrived at the destined port, and Owhyhee, together with his unfortunate countrymen, were sold for slaves.

  In this situation he lived a considerable time. At length, wearied with the cruelty which was every day practised towards himself and his companions, and which their utmost industry and caution could not avoid, Owhyhee and five more made their escape into the woods. Their flight was soon discovered, and the utmost efforts of their tyrants were exerted against them, and were too successful; Owhyhee alone escaped the pursuit. Stealing one evening from his retreat, he bent his way towards the plantation, in order, if possible, to discover the fate of his companions. The first object which presented itself, was a scaffold, on which preparations were making for impaling some unfortunates.—He was soon confirmed in his conjecture that his late friends were about to suffer the horrid punishment. They were dragged to the stake, he saw them bleed—then sought his woods again.

  The night was dark, and Owhyhee, wondering why he lived, wandered to the shore. He seated himself beneath an overhanging point of rock, and watched the sea every moment illumined by the l
ightning. In a moment the blast arose. Owhyhee every instant thought he heard the voice of his Ora calling to him from the winds. He listened—several voices of distress reached him, and the lightning flashing, he saw, at a considerable distance before him, a vessel almost a wreck. As soon as he discovered the unfortunate object, he left the sheltering rock, and stood immediately at the water’s edge—the swoln bodies of the drowned floated around him.—At the moment he was anxiously surveying the scene before him, a corpse was thrown at his feet; it was that of a countrywoman, and a moment sufficed him to discover that it was that of his Ora—her wrists still bore marks of chains, and he concluded that she, like himself, must have become the victim of the white marauders. Her ravishers, however, had, in common with the objects of their brutality, met their fate.

  “My Ora,” said Owhyhee, taking the hand of his mistress from the ground, and pressing it to his bosom, “thou hast abandoned thy lover, and yet he must follow thee. When they dragged thee from thy native plains, thou didst not imagine that that violence was a summons to thee from Owhyhee to accompany him to his rest.”

  He plunged his knife into his heart, and sunk deep in the wave.

  Notes

  To avoid overloading the notes, quotations from Jane Austen’s own letters are not as a rule given date or page references. They are easily traced either in R. W. Chapman’s editions (1932 and 1952) or in Deirdre Le Faye’s 1995 edition, now available in paperback.

  1

  1775

  1. George Austen to Mrs. Susannah Walter, his half-brother’s wife, 17 Dec. 1775, in R. A. Austen-Leigh, The Austen Papers, 1704–1856 (1942; hereafter cited as AP), p. 32.

  2. Philadelphia Hancock was expected to help out at Cassandra’s birth in Jan. 1773 in spite of the bad time of year for travelling, as Mrs. Austen mentions in a letter to her sister-in-law Mrs. Walter (8 Nov. 1772, AP , p. 28); and she had been before at least once, for George’s birth. A woman friend or member of the family was normally asked to be present to assist during childbirth; Mrs. Austen went to her sister, Mrs. Cooper, in 1770, for example. Philadelphia was in England in 1775, and so easily able to come to Steventon.

  3. For the pearls, see Tysoe Saul Hancock to Philadelphia Hancock, 22 May 1775, AP, p. 81; for the harpsichord, see Tysoe Saul Hancock to Philadelphia Hancock, 31 Jan. 1772, AP, p. 60; for the play, Tysoe Saul Hancock to Elizabeth Hancock, 7 Nov. 1771, British Library Add. MSS 29,236.

  4. Eliza Chute’s sister, Lady Compton, gave birth on 1 Jan. 1790, went into her mother’s bedroom on the 16th, went downstairs on the 27th, went out on the 29th and to the child’s christening on 2 Feb. Mrs. Austen’s daughter-in-law Elizabeth (Austen/Knight) gave birth to her ninth child on 13 Nov. 1804, got up for dinner and walked to her chair on 23 Nov., walked without any support on 2 Dec. and dined downstairs for the first time on 10 Dec. She did not go out to church until 10 Feb., i.e., three months after the birth. Two years later she gave birth to her tenth child on 16 Nov. 1806, dined in the schoolroom (i.e., upstairs) for the first time on 15 Dec. and went outside for the first time on 10 Jan. 1807. She did not go to church until 25 Jan. All these dates were noted by her daughter Fanny in her diary, held at Kent County Archives, U951 F24/169.

  5. The godmothers were the wife of Jane’s great-uncle Francis Austen, the Kentish lawyer, and Mrs. Musgrave, married to her mother’s cousin, Rector of Chinnor. Her godfather was the Revd. Samuel Cooke of Great Bookham, whose wife was Mrs. Austen’s first cousin and namesake, Cassandra Leigh, daughter of Theophilus Leigh, Master of Balliol. Mrs. Francis Austen died in 1782, Mrs. Musgrave was never heard of again. Mr. Cooke, described by Fanny Burney as a worthy man, had problems with his own eleven children, of whom only three survived into adult life. Jane did, however, stay with the Cookes in 1814, and he expressed his admiration for Mansfield Park.

  6. Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Susannah Walter, 6 June 1773, AP, p. 29. Her sister, Jane Cooper, did stop at two, but she did not marry until she was thirty-two and her husband was forty.

  7. George Austen had been presented with the living of Steventon in 1761 by the husband of a second cousin, Thomas Knight, who was overall, and absentee, landlord of Steventon. The living gave Mr. Austen only three acres of glebe land to cultivate, but Mr. Knight allowed him to run Cheesedown Farm in addition, which meant he was farming a considerable amount of land. He was given special permission by the Archbishop of Canterbury to hold the second living of Deane in March 1773. Mr. Austen’s selling off of his South Sea annuities is recorded in his account with Hoare’s Bank.

  8. Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Susannah Walter, 6 June 1773, AP, p. 29: “I suckled my little girl thro’ the first quarter; she has been weaned and settled at a good woman’s at Deane just eight weeks; she is very healthy and lively, and puts on her short petticoats today.” It is possible, of course, that Mrs. Austen did not follow the same regime with all her children; she may, for instance, have kept her first-born at home and at the breast for longer. Mrs. Thrale breast-fed only her first child, Queenie. James Austen and his mother were noticeably strongly attached to one another.

  9. From Advice to Young Men (1829), cited in Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (1982), p. 100.

  10. Susan Ferrier described in Chapter 19 of her novel Marriage (published in 1818 but written in 1810 and set earlier) the treatment of twin girls whose mother was unwilling to feed them: one was found a wet nurse, the other handed over to the old aunts of the family to be reared on chopped rusks, gruel, colic powders and other patent medicines administered on a spoon and through a “sucking pot.” The hand-reared one is narrowly saved from death by being adopted by a young aunt and found a second wet nurse. Sucking pots came into use during the eighteenth century; they were usually of ceramic with a pierced spout over which went a piece of cloth. Deirdre Le Faye suggests in “The Austens and the Littleworths,” Jane Austen Society Report (1987), pp. 15–20, that a couple called John and Elizabeth Littleworth, with children of their own, all mentioned in Austen letters, may have been regular foster parents to the Austen children. John was sixty-one at the time of Jane Austen’s birth, his wife presumably close enough in age to be an unlikely wet nurse. Mrs. Austen simply refers to “a good woman at Deane” in her letter of 6 June 1773 about Cassandra, AP, p. 29. Edward is said to have referred to a nurse he remembered as “Movie.” The whole subject of wet nursing is discussed in Valerie Fildes’s Wet Nursing (1988). See especially Chapter 8, “Wet Nursing in the Eighteenth Century.” At three months a baby might be fed on pap, semi-liquid food made of milk and flour or breadcrumbs. In the 1760s the philanthropist Jonas Hanway claimed that artificial feeding on animal milk was better than reliance on wet nurses, for foundlings at any rate. “Bubby-pots” (feeding bottles) were in use in London at the Foundling Hospital, according to Valerie Fildes’s Breasts, Bottles and Babies (1986), but it seems unlikely they would have been used in Hampshire.

  11. This is a statistic for 1764, the year of the marriage of Jane Austen’s parents, given in Lawrence Stone’s The Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 68.

  12. Mrs. Grant in her Letters from the Mountains (3 vols., 1807; written between 1773 and 1803), Vol. I, letter 3, p. 35.

  13. James-Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870), p. 45. Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality, published in five volumes between 1766 and 1770, was a very popular and influential book.

  14. See Mrs. Cassandra Austen to Susannah Walter, 8 Nov. 1772, AP, p. 28, in which Mrs. Austen writes of having “all four at home,” which must at that date have included George.

  15. George Austen to Susannah Walter, 8 July 1770, AP, p. 23.

  16. In 1827 Edward assigned the whole of his inheritance from his mother (£437.2s.91⁄2d.) to the use of his brother George, AP, p. 334. George lived to be seventy-two, dying of dropsy. See W. Jarvis, “Some Information about Jane Austen’s Connections,” Jane Austen Society Report (1976), p. 15.

  17. John Woodman to Warren Hastings, 20 June 1776, British Library
Add. MSS 29,137, f. 243.

  18. Philadelphia Hancock’s account for 1777 at Hoare’s Bank, ledger 95, p. 93. The exact sums are £3,438.13s.6d. (on 9 May 1777) and £4,800. There are also a few dividends. Phila bought Consols to the value of £2,669.5s., and paid her uncle Francis Austen £384.12 s.7d. She also settled an account with Madame Nettine & Co. in Dec., probably a dressmaker; she figures again.

  19. James Woodforde of Long Weston, Norfolk, notes this special service and Fast, which he announced the previous Sunday, and for which he had “as full a congregation as I have in an afternoon on a Sunday, very few that did not come.” Diary of a Country Parson (5 vols., 1924–31), Vol. I, p. 194.

  20. The remark comes from p. 61 of Chawton Manor and Its Owners, published in 1911, and is attributed to a cousin of Mrs. Austen, written down and kept in the Leigh family.

  2

  MERITOCRATS

  1. The Leighs were descended from Sir Thomas Leigh, Lord Mayor of London at the time of the crowning of Queen Elizabeth. The younger branch was ennobled and owned Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire. In the elder branch Mrs. Austen’s grandfather married Mary Brydges, a sister of the first Duke of Chandos, who was the patron of Handel and the butt of Pope.

  2. The document was in the possession of Mrs. John Francis Austen of Capel Manor, near Horsmonden, when R. A. Austen-Leigh transcribed it in 1909. He printed it in 1942, in Chapter 1 of AP, a book invaluable to all who write about Jane Austen.

  3. Information from AP, Chapter 1, and from Maggie Lane, Jane Austen through Five Generations (1984).

  4. William Walter was on good terms with his half-brother and sister, George and Philadelphia Austen. Mrs. Austen corresponded with Mrs. Walter, and Philadelphia’s daughter corresponded with the Walters’ daughter, another Philadelphia. The Walter family preserved many of these letters, published in AP.